Tech Talent shortage in 2023
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Mitch King
The skills shortage in Australia is nothing new, but makes it difficult for some companies to find and keep workers with knowledge and expertise across many occupations. As the tech sector has seen a boom in tech-related jobs, the demand for workers such as cybersecurity experts, software engineers and developers is higher than ever. So much so that the Tech Council of Australia has predicted the need for one million people in tech jobs by 2025. To achieve this target, the tech talent shortage and skills gap need addressing.
After recruiting for tech roles and companies for nearly 15 years, it’s difficult to remember when there wasn't a shortage of tech talent during that period. The only thing that has changed is the specific type of skills that companies are seeking. But how are we still experiencing a shortage of skills when we've had more than 10 years to prepare for and address the issue?
Trends in technical recruitment: “Talent shortages are often self-created”
A very common scenario that you might have seen over the years; a new technology or programming language comes into popularity in the market, and companies want to use the best available tools to build their products and services. These companies then start searching for employees, looking for people with experience using these new technologies and languages, only to realise that the skill is hard to find in the market, but they have already committed to the technology stack.
Not wanting to back out, they push ahead in their search for the rare talent that has used these new technologies and languages, not realising they are part of a small pack of companies all looking for and competing with each other for the same few people.
Sitting to the side and being totally ignored are hundreds, if not thousands, of talented people with transferable skills but without specific technology experience.
In summary, these talent shortages are often self-created.
If you ask most senior software engineers, for example, they will tell you that the actual experience with specific languages or libraries isn't that important. They pick up new languages all the time, which the vast majority love to do. Things like coding architecture are more important. If someone understands the core principles, they can pick up new technology quickly and apply it better than someone without strong core principles but who has used that particular language or technology longer.
How tech talent shortages affect SMEs in Australia
When these talent shortage markets are created, they are often won by the bigger companies with the bigger bank balances to offer to candidates. This leaves Australian SMEs in long, frustrating hunts for these unicorns that are not only hard to find but they now can't afford.
If that happens across the entire Australian market, it could have a significant negative impact on our local talent.
Imagine a scenario where 80% of the top software engineers work for ten companies using the same technology stacks. Hoarding that talent means there's less diversification of our top minds solving different problems and sharing their knowledge with other engineers.
That means we would then have fewer new companies and startups forming, which we need as part of the tech employment ecosystem. Otherwise, there's a long-term scenario where Australian technology talent only exists in the top end of town.
How SMEs can compete in hiring tech talent
But it's not all doom and gloom. This is just the current, yet frustrating, approach that too many companies take when it comes to hiring. The SMEs that are managing to attract and keep top talent without having to put their business operating costs at risk are doing a few things:
1. Hire for transferable skills
Instead of spending six months looking for rare skills in the market, these smart cookies spend one month looking for people who can pick up those skills quickly. It may take them three months to ramp up, but put those scenarios side by side, and you still have three months of momentum versus a company that is still looking for its unicorn.
2. Adopt the 4-day work week
There has been a global trial of 4-day work weeks. Australia's trial included 26 companies who reported extremely positive findings, and 95% of the companies wish to continue with the 4-day week model. You wouldn't have to look too hard to find positive reviews from employees shifting from working five days a week to four, but it's very telling that 95% of companies want to continue with the model after the trial.
Capterra’s Flexible Working survey found that two-thirds of employees whose company has not yet introduced this working practice expect leadership to resist the idea. But, it may be the single biggest lever a company can pull to make themselves more attractive to top talent in any industry.
3. Embrace remote working
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced remote working, then the economy took a downward turn, and CEOs and company decision-makers started to drive everyone back to the office. But depending on which report you read, as much as 92% of the population is still looking for fully remote jobs, with only around 10-15% of roles advertised offering remote options.
This is particularly true for more senior talent with families who want to swap their commute for more time with their kids or move outside of major cities for bigger, more affordable houses.
4. Hire and train junior talent
Speaking from years of hiring experience, it seems there hasn’t been, or there might not ever be, a shortage of talented juniors trying to get their foot in the door with their first role after graduating. However, many companies can't, don't or won't commit the resources to training or have the patience to get them there. But if you weigh up the time investment of training juniors against the time you spend hunting and interviewing unicorns, you might wish you had started that strategy years ago.
How to leverage technology as part of your tech recruitment hiring strategy
It's quite the oxymoron if you're trying to hire the top people in tech using old school techniques. Gone are the days of relying heavily on major job boards, as most of the top talent you're looking for are too busy working for your competitors to trawl through job boards.
HR and recruitment technology have come a long way in the past 10 years. It may not solve all your hiring needs, but by using the right tools correctly, there are opportunities to leverage tech in each stage of the recruitment process. These are the broad steps in a recruitment process where technology can and should be used:
1. Sourcing: If you're not proactively searching for and reaching out to candidates, you're already a step behind. Some tools can help run searches from multiple sources, like LinkedIn, GitHub and X (formerly Twitter), all in one place. You can then build messaging sequences for these candidates just like you're probably already doing when marketing to your customers.
2. Interviewing: You could add AI note-taking tools to your Zoom, Teams or Google Meet interviews, freeing you up to ask better questions, give better answers and give your candidates a better interview experience. A huge range of assessment tools is available to help you gauge not just technical ability but also personality traits and cultural alignment.
3. Candidate experience: Without an applicant tracking system (ATS) of some sort, you may likely struggle with most, if not all, areas of your recruitment process. For example, your candidate experience is going to be super hard to manage well and if you don't care about candidate experience, you're going to find things even harder.
Everyone talks, not excluding the top tech talent you're trying to hire. So if they have a bad experience with you —not hearing back on applications, long periods of silence, onesided interview experiences— then you've probably burnt a bridge with another 10 to 15 people in their circles. Your ATS is where all the information lives, where all the communication starts and where a lot of your next and best hires will come from.
In conclusion
There is definitely a tech talent shortage in Australia, especially for companies looking for the same skilled workers as everyone else without offering benefits that cater to a better work-life balance or the opportunity for training and upskilling. The companies and technical recruitment teams that are smart about it and change their hiring strategy to match what the top talent is looking for aren't having the same issues when hiring.
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